J. Frank Dobie, perhaps the best storyteller Texas has produced, taught
literature and folklore at the University of Texas in Austin,
intermittently, and controversially, from 1914 to 1947.
Perceptive, honest and outspoken, he confronted power with truth in an
age of cold war hysteria when such behavior was labeled, liberal,
unpatriotic or worse.

He produced an annotated bibliography for his students, published in
book form in 1942 and revised in 1952. His incidental thoughts
about the listed books and ideas they convey, include some of his best
writing—short vivid word images that range far beyond the
Southwest. He realized that the way to the universal is through
the local, and that nothing local is too trivial for informed
consideration. Provincial, however, he was not.